


Already dead

by badgerpride89



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, TW: disturbing imagery and violence, bifur has a sad life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 03:19:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/705926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badgerpride89/pseuds/badgerpride89
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bifur has died many times. At least, he thinks so.</p><p>Written for hobbit-kink golden oldie prompt: http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/3900.html?thread=7177276#t7177276</p><p>Bifur being awesome.</p><p>Which somehow morphed into this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Already dead

He has died many times. He's fairly certain. Sometimes he wakes in the night and does not breathe, not cannot breathe but does not because he knows, knows, this is wrong. He is dead, he knows it. He should be afraid but fear long fled him. He should be dead but isn't and every day, he wonders why. He's never been one for words and the ones he had are long gone, abandoning the remnants of a dead language to die with him.  
  
Except some days he wonders why Bofur's there. Why Bombur forces food down his throat (he is dead, he does not need to eat). Why every now and again another wrapped child joins them. He figures the little ones are dead too, not Bofur and Bombur, they're somehow here when they shouldn't be (no, he's here when he shouldn't be; they are where they belong) and tries to welcome them with toys. Dead children like scarier toys, right? Because the live ones like bright colors and big eyes so dead ones like the opposite. Only sometimes he knows  _they_  aren't dead and his head is one jumbled mess. Some days he wakes and wonders what happened because the table is cracked in half and Bofur's eye's not the right color. Some days he even cares. He just wants them to understand that he is dead and just leave him be. No one interacted with the shades of the world and he knows he's been condemned to it though he doesn't know  _why._  
  
He meets the others, sometimes knows their faces or names or voices, never all at once. Sometimes he tries to know more. The thief hates Baggins, the gruff voice is reliable at his back, and the King-who-is-not is just as dead as he is. He just doesn't know it. But the days move on and sometimes, only sometimes, Bifur helps himself to greens he can't remember finding but knows he did. It calms the clawing which has been plaguing and punishing him. He stares at the spear in his hands for hours on end though only moments pass. Something is important about it, that he knows, and he knows that it isn't right. But the what escapes and frustrates him until he flings the thing into the fire, unable to look at it any longer. Someone retrieves it and hands it to him but he decides to sleep so that he can escape it. He is dead, after all, and it has to sink in one of these days.  
  
When the creatures atop the others attack, he fights and claws and stabs, does everything he can to ensure neither gets back up. He doesn't know why this is important but it is and it keeps Bofur and Bombur from joining him so he keeps at it with the funny looking things (who are not funny at all, they claw and bite and topple the greats) when the grey one comes and they run. He is last up the trees, protecting the living, he supposes, has become something of a mission until death decides to deal with him properly. The King-who-is-not does the same. He does not fear, he is dead so why should the living worry? Only the little ones and the tiny one don't understand that and risk themselves for the King-who-is-not. But the King-who-is-not becomes Fortune's favorite and he decides to not be dead anymore. Bifur doesn't know how he did it, or why he would want to, but he waves at his former companion and wishes him well.  
  
Many events happen and somehow though he is dead, he still remains with the living. Isolated in a cell, he thinks it is finally the moment but no, Baggins comes and chats (as if he cares what he has to say) and pleads with him to eat, to hang in there. Just once he wishes someone could understand him. He is dead and he cannot remember why and this clawing and pain and the shadows around him punish him for a crime he does not remember but knows with his very being he committed. Some time later, they are given new clothes and weapons. The spear the King-who-shall-be gives him mocks him in the twilight gloom but he is the only one dead and someone needs to stave it off for the rest of them. Who better than someone who cannot die?

The funny things and creatures atop other creatures attack and swarm the mountain, running over them as water upon stone. Bifur does not fear, simply fights harder and harder and harder beside the King-who-is. When he loses the spear, he grabs another's cleaver-ax and continues. He feels nothing, he is a shade and shadow, they cannot touch him.  
  
"Fili!" The King-who-is shouts, his voice so broken it hovers between life and death itself. Bifur watches him with disinterest as the King-who-is tosses himself in front of the little one and the other little one follows. Bifur blinks and this...this he knows. He  _knows._  He grabs another sword and rushes to them as the little one joins the other. No, no, no, no, his head thrums and his heart beats for the first time. He parries one creature who would have them and sends him into death. The creatures keep coming and keep coming but no, no, they will not have them. They cannot have them. A white one is upon them, snarling about how he will kill them all. He cannot kill one who is already dead and so will not kill _this_ family. The other is strong but Bifur feels nothing from his strikes nor parries. The other spears him with the not-hand, that Bifur actually feels like a small gust of wind. But he uses their proximity to attack the white's head with his own. He cannot die, cannot die when he is already dead, and grabs the white's head and twists hard before he can recover. The white falls, he atop it, and feels the not-hand drive itself further into his dead body. He commands himself to move, shades do not stop for the clawing or the pain; they endure. He fights and fights and does not know any more than that.

\----

He is still dead. And always will be. He can never do penance for his crime but he watches the others. The King-who-is has been fully reclaimed by Life. The little ones live but are one step closer to his side than the King-who-is. Baggins eludes him. He is a shade as well, a different sort, but he doesn't know he is. He believes himself firmly in the domain of the living but one who walks through shadows is no love of Life's. Those who become shadows, even less.


End file.
